With Love (Book)

Printed in 1988, this unofficial book was put together and independently published by fans for fans, and covers Kate through the media outlet from 1978 and up until 1986. It features many press cuttings of interviews, reviews and other news items from within that span of time – both negative and positive reviews. The book itself is a softcover that measures 12” x 8” and has 64 pages in total. The pages are unnumbered and no author(s) are credited to this book.

The Illustrated Collector's Guide To Kate Bush: Second Edition

I'll begin by saying that if you don't own this book (or even the long out of print first edition from '91) don't waste your money getting it. With Kate resurfacing again in 2005, it's very clear to me that this book was reprinted simply as a money grab and nothing more. As a so called updated and expanded version of the original release, this reprint is disappointing on so many levels. If this edition has one thing going for it, it's that full colour illustrations have been used this time - but it doesn't really make up for the fact that there's so much wrong with the book in general... not to mention so much missing.

One of the absolute biggest annoyances I have with this book is the poor layout design, which is clearly evident right from the start. I also find it irritating how the back of LPs and Singles are never shown in this book because many Singles and LPs have artwork or designs that differ to their UK counterparts. Also, if there's a release with a colour vinyl single, it usually lies on top of the picture sleeve obscuring its view entirely. The entire book is like this, and it's a poor, poor layout design.

This edition, like the first, also suffers greatly with a lack of missing information in different ways. One of the many examples can be found on the page showing you the 7" singles from The Red Shoes. The picture for the Eat The Music one is presumably the sleeve for the deleted 7" single, but apart from the one photo there's no information about it anywhere on any of the pages - not even a simple catalogue number.

All the entries in this book are overly crammed together, and they don't even line up in their relevant sections in some cases. Just take a look at the 12" single for Moments of Pleasure. It's been oddly crammed underneath in the promos section. This also leads me to my next point - the lack of thoroughness with this book. Now as far as I'm concerned, the section for The Red Shoes 12" singles is totally lacking. Nowhere are there any photos or even a mention of the Italian 12" release of Rubberband Girl, which by the way, wasn't even issued as a picture disc, but a standard black vinyl release with picture labels. This general lack of information shows how thorough the book isn't.

I find the lack of information when it comes to these promo releases to be pretty appalling to be honest. Take the case of the Italian promo for Hammer Horror below. This release came in a very unique picture sleeve with Kate on the cover, but as usual there's no photo of it.

I also find the lack of correct information in this book to be ridiculous. Case in point, the listing for the Italian promo of the Hounds of Love Interview. This isn't even an official promo release. It's a bootleg and was never commissioned by EMI Italia or EMI UK. If the author of this book had any basic knowledge, then he would have been aware of this fact.

Personally, I think a lot of unnecessary space was wasted in sections like this one with the reprinting of the tracks. It would have made a lot more sense to use the extra space to show the back portion of the CD cases or even the CDs themselves.

Redundant timeline on Kate's TV appearances that's neither complete or in the right order. It would have made more sense to use this space for other relevant things.

Since the author chose to go with full colour illustrations in this edition, even using better quality paper, it makes it even more of a shame that he didn’t expand further on things by showing specific items in better detail, or more importantly, branching off into what I consider to be more relevant collecting areas. It would have benefited greatly had a lot more work been put into this “revised edition”, but this is nothing more than a rehash of the original… including the same grammatical errors, inconsistencies and downright incorrect information. But I've also got to wonder how much the author bluffed his way through this book. What I mean by that statement is that I'd be interested in knowing how much of this stuff really came from his own collection, how much he allegedly borrowed from the U.S. fraudster known as Tom Richards, and how much was simply borrowed from the internet. Upon scanning these pages in, I noticed something very interesting. If you take a look at the bottom right-hand corner of the piano book cover for Hammer Horror, you will see right away that this particular photo was lifted from eBay. I've even blown this section up better in case it doesn't show well in my original scan. After I noticed this, a lot of things about the book began to make sense to me - particularly the lack of information everywhere.

Final Verdict: This book is extremely mediocre at best. If it sounds like I really hate the book, then you're right - I do. It's full of inconsistencies, lack of information, incorrect information and all around a huge waste of money. I've forgotten more than this clown clearly even knows. I can't recommend anyone wasting good money on this rubbish.